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On the latest episode of GoodFellows, senior fellows John Cochrane, H.R. McMaster, and Niall Ferguson, as well as moderator and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, commemorate 250 years of American independence by speaking with a celebrated military historian, Rick Atkinson, about the American colonists’ successful revolt against the British empire.
If you spent any part of your Fourth of July weekend wondering how a group of outgunned colonists managed to pull off a victory over the mighty Redcoats, this episode offers the overview you need! Below you’ll find select quotations from this fascinating examination of America’s Revolutionary War and its place in world history.
Quote of the Day
Rick Atkinson kicks off the show by presenting what each side in the Revolution needed to do to achieve victory. As he emphasizes, the necessary objectives for the British and American forces were not the same.
I think what we see in the American Revolution is something that’s familiar to us throughout history generally, and certainly American history. When you’re waging a counterinsurgency, especially one that’s expeditionary, we have to travel a long distance to put down the insurrection. You have to win. And if you’re the rebels fighting an insurrection, you have to not lose. Washington doesn’t recognize that immediately, but he comes to understand it. He doesn’t articulate it quite that well, but he certainly understands the concept [that the Americans] have to not lose. And for the British, eight years of war across 3,000 miles of open ocean in the age of sail, they have neither the generals nor the will within the military and particularly at home to prevail.
The Central Issue: What New Can Be Said on the American Revolution?
Plenty, according to this episode’s trio of historians!
H.R. McMaster says to Atkinson, “I’m amazed at how much new material you brought in to [your study of] the Revolution. Can you maybe share with our viewers the papers that you accessed, what those papers told you?”
Atkinson responds by explaining his philosophy on the study of history, as well as the source materials he used to investigate the Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic.
I start with the principle that all great events in human history, like all great personages in human history, they’re bottomless. There’s more to discover. There’s more to write. There always will be. People will be writing about Abraham Lincoln 500 years from now. So a couple points on this. First, the way you get inside Washington’s head, and he is the indispensable man, he’s the long pole in the tent and he’s pretty opaque. He deliberately does not want you to be inside his head. One of the artists who painted him from life remarked on his remarkably dead eye because he could make his eyes go dead and not wanting the viewer to see inside him. So the way you do it is. . . through the papers. The University of Virginia has been curating the Washington papers since 1968. They’re on volume 37 of the Revolutionary War papers. They’re almost finished. I’ve read volumes one through 27 for the first two volumes of my trilogy. They’re each 600 pages long and that’s the best way to get inside Washington. . .
And then another example. . . you can dig [into] the papers of George III, Your Last King, as my friend Ken Burns says. [These papers] are kept in Windsor Castle just west of London. In 2016, Queen Elizabeth II, who owned those papers, opened [them] up to outside scrutiny: the Georgian papers, the papers of all four Georges that became king in the 18th and 19th centuries. I was one of the first allowed in to take a look for a whole month at Windsor in April 2016, every day showing my badge at the Henry VIII Gate to get into the castle and then climbing 102 stone steps pointing [to] wooden stairs to the Garrett of the Round Tower begun by William the Conqueror in the 11th century. That’s where they keep the papers. And that’s where you get inside George III’s head.
Key Takeaways
Could the Revolution Have Been Resolved Earlier Via Negotiation?
Atkinson suggests that once the major events of the Revolution got going, a process was set in motion that would be difficult to stop: “Once things like Bunker Hill occur, that’s June 17th, 1775, 226 British dead at Bunker Hill, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle, once the killing begins in earnest. . . Had the British offered some of the generous terms that they would later offer in 1778, for example, when there was a mission sent from London to basically concede everything that the British had denied previously, to concede everything that the Americans had demanded earlier with the exception of independence. But by that point, it’s too late and the rebels have the bit in their teeth and I don’t think that you’re ever going to stop short of a final decision. The truth is that even if Washington is killed, even if the British win militarily, I think it’s very difficult to see a political settlement that is satisfactory to what the king and the British government are hoping for.“
What Were Some of the Structural Drivers of the Revolution?
Atkinson continues: “The American population is doubling every 25 years. It’s four times the rate of growth in Britain at that time. It’s a greater rate of growth than ever seen in modern European history. The United States is going to get big very quickly and I think it’s going to be difficult for the United States to remain in a subservient role forever, particularly because it’s become a blood feud at that point and there’s going to be a residual insurrection, especially in the South where it really is a civil war. So I don’t think that once we get to 1778 or so, I don’t think that you’re ever going to see a resolution that is more or less amicable as far as the British are concerned.“
John Cochrane adds: “At some point there was a settlement . . . I mean, eventually, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia worked out a deal that could have [eventually] been on the table for the US. So I think independence was such a crazy idea, especially when you depend on international trade and Britania does rule the waves, it would seem that the contingency is just: A little more common sense on the British part could have avoided [the Revolution]. And similarly, I read in your books as elsewhere, [about] so many what seem like horrible [British] mistakes [like] going up and down the coast of New England and burning down towns. [This] does not look like a brilliant idea.”
How Could the Revolution Have Been Different?
Niall Ferguson lays out one of the scenarios that most interests him: “My favorite counterfactual is the 1763 one, when at the Peace of Paris at the end of the Seven Years War, instead of taking Canada, the British Imperial government takes Guadalupe. And the counterfactual, which is quite a plausible one, is . . . if [the British had] just taken the little Caribbean island of Guadalupe rather than Canada, then the incentives would’ve been very different for the people in the 13 colonies. I’m going to quote William Burke here who said, “If sir, the people of our colonies find no check from Canada, they will extend themselves almost without bounds into the inland parts by eagerly grasping at extensive territory. We may run the risk that perhaps in no very distant period of losing what we now possess.” So Guadalupe instead of Canada, no American Revolution. That’s one of my favorite counterfactuals.”
Why Are Wealth Taxes Entering the National Political Conversation?
The Grumpy Economist John Cochrane has thoughts: “The impulse to a national wealth tax is obvious because if you put in a state wealth tax, the rich people leave and if you put a national one, it’s much harder for them to leave because where are they going to go? UK, good luck to you. I think a lot of the objective is not to raise revenue. The objective is to get rid of the rich; [the] problem is [if] you get rid of them, you get rid of all their companies while you’re at it.”
Recommended Reading
Rick Atkinson’s planned George Washington trilogy including his first The British Are Coming, and his most recent, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Fate of the Day
H.R. McMaster recommends the works of the late, great historian Gordon Wood, who was tragically killed in June
Niall Ferguson recommends Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World by Maya Jasanoff and the chapter “British America” by J.C.D. Clark in Fergsuon’s edited volume, Virtual History
Parting Wisdom
H.R. McMaster, fusing the episode’s discussions of the American Revolution and the state of American politics today, considers whether at some point, citizens will say “Enough!” to proposals that will confiscate more of their wealth and reduce overall prosperity, particularly in economically struggling states like California:
Well, I’m just wondering, based on what we [heard in our] Rick Atkinson discussion, maybe there can be a billionaire Boston Tea Party moment. And I’m [now] reading from Rick’s book, “The British Are Coming! Rally Mohawks, bring out your axes, and tell King George: We’ll pay no taxes.” So I think maybe there needs to be a billionaire Boston Tea Party moment and maybe that’s what’s happening with so much capital and tax base fleeing California.
That wraps up this GoodFellows conversation guide. If you like this companion to the show, or have any recommendations for future conversation guides, please let us know in the comments below.
John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. An economist specializing in financial economics and macroeconomics, he is the author of The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. He also authors a popular Substack called The Grumpy Economist.
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Ascent of Money, Civilization, and Doom; columnist with the Free Press; founder of Greenmantle; and co-founder of the University of Austin.
H. R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and distinguished visiting fellow at Arizona State University. He is author of the bestselling books Dereliction of Duty, Battlegrounds, and At War With Ourselves.